


New Hope

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Gen, Gifts, Hope, Love, Poverty, Refugees, Snow, building a snowman, tradition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 03:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13068375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: It's Midwinter in New Hope, and Tobe isn't so much poor as he is loved.





	New Hope

New Hope

On the fourth day of Midwinter, Tobe and Lady Kel were just sitting like two lumps on a log on the cushioned bench in the hallway of the officers’ quarters at New Hope. The officers got pillows for their rumps while everyone else had to be happy with hard wood. There were plenty of shortages in New Hope—there was always almost enough but never quite enough food, blankets, and clothes for all the refugees—but there was ever an abundance of wood. 

The fir forests of the far north were good for firewood that kept them from freezing, for furniture, and, around Midwinter, for decorations that tried to bring some holiday cheer into the grim cold. An evergreen without baubles stood sentry in the hallway of the officers’ quarters as other trees did in the mess hall and barracks. Garlands of evergreen were arched over doorways and wound along walls. The scent of pine pervaded everything, filling the air so thickly that Tobe could taste the sharpness of it on his tongue without even sticking it out. This was Midwinter in a refugee camp, a temporary home that had become all too permanent. 

“I’ve a present for you, Tobe,” Lady Kel said, and Tobe gawked at her like a fish that had flopped out of its stream. 

“I wasn’t expectin’ nothin’, lady.” Tobe shook his head to try to clear away the shock. 

“Anything. You weren’t expecting anything,” corrected Lady Kel gently. Recently she had taken to trying to improve his diction. Maybe she was trying to prepare him for polite society if she ever made it back to civilization. 

“I wasn’t expecting anything,” Tobe repeated obediently, attempting to pronounce his g as she did though it felt unnatural. 

“It’s good you weren’t expecting anything.” Lady Kel smiled crookedly at him. “Then it will be a surprise.” 

Tobe figured he’d receive a coin—he’d heard that kinder masters than old Alvik might give their servants a coin for Midwinter—and that would have been nice, since a coin could buy anything in New Hope even if there was never much for sale, so he was stunned when Lady Kel pulled a flute out from under her cloak. Before he even touched it, he could see that it was carved from smooth wood, not the rough and splintery stuff from which he had clumsily hewn a flute for himself. 

Tentatively taking the flute between his trembling fingers, he realized that this flute, which must have cost far more than a coin, must have come from Corus. Tobe had never been to Corus, but he hoped Lady Kel would take him there someday, especially if there were more instruments like his there. Corus in his imagination was a city rich with music and magic. 

“Thank you, lady.” Tobe wrapped his arms around her. He longed to call her Mother the way the rest of the camp did but he didn’t want her to think he was mocking her. That didn’t stop him from thinking that she was the closest thing he had to a mother. She was patient and firm with him, never hurting him and never leaving him. He loved her even more than he had Eulama the midwife because the bottle never swallowed her as it had Eulama. He should have gotten her a gift as he had Loey, trading some of his rations for a red ribbon that he believed would look beautiful in Loey’s hair. Words muffled in the wool of Lady Kel’s clock, which was scratching his cheek, he apologized, “Sorry I didn’t get you nothin’, lady.” 

“Don’t be sorry, Tobe.” This time Lady Kel didn’t correct his grammar or annunciation. She just ruffled his hair. “It’s traditional for a noble to get her servant a Midwinter gift, but it’s not traditional for a servant to buy a present for his noble.” 

“Next year, I’ll get you somethin’, lady,” promised Tobe, not caring about what was traditional. 

“I’ll treasure it.” Lady Kel gave his hair a final ruffle before making a shooing motion with her hands. “Run along now. You’ve the whole day off. Enjoy it.” 

“Yes, lady.” Tobe barely got the words out before he bolted down the corridor to put on his cloak, hat, and gloves as well as fetch the ribbon he wanted to give to Loey. 

He found Loey, the silver of the wintry sun glinting in her hair as it did the snow beneath his boots, outside the refugee barracks, rolling a ball to make a snowman. He helped her, relishing the cold crunch of the snow underneath his gloves as he shaped it into a round stomach, the sort of stomach that would only exist on a snowman in New Hope. When they were satisfied with the size of the snowman’s stomach, they rolled a smaller ball for his head, and, laughing, settled it over his stomach. 

“He don’t have no neck.” Tobe studied their creation critically. 

“Now he looks like he’s got a neck.” Loey unraveled her scarf from around her neck and twisted it between the two balls that made up their snowman. 

“We should give him eyes.” Tobe bent to grab two tiny stones from the ground and placed them on the snowman’s face. Now the snowman seemed to gaze back at him with gray eyes that urged him to enjoy this moment with Loey before it melted into memory. 

“And a nose,” added Loey, scooping another pebble from the dirt that had been exposed when they rolled the snow into balls and planting it like a seed in the center of the snowman’s face. 

“Pinecones will do for a hat.” Tobe leapt up to snatch a handful of pinecones from the overhanging boughs of a towering evergreen. 

He positioned them around the snowman’s head in a spiky circle that looked a bit like a prickly crown he thought. Apparently, Loey had the same idea for she giggled. “He looks like a king.” 

“A snow king.” Tobe laughed, throwing back his head far enough that his hat risked falling into the snow. “A king of winter.” 

“I’m cold.” Loey slipped damp fingers between Tobe’s warm gloves, and it was only then that Tobe remembered she didn’t have any. Before he could insist she take his, she tugged him toward the stables, where Tobe was always eager to visit his horse friends. “Let’s warm up in the stables.” 

Once they had curled up in the straw in Hoshi’s stall—Loey refused to go near Peachblossom for fear of having her arm chomped off—Tobe fumbled in the pocket of his breeches for the ribbon he had gotten for Loey. 

“This is for you.” Wishing he sounded less stiff and awkward, Tobe dumped the ribbon in her palm, where it coiled like a poisonous snake about to strike at his heel. “I hope you like it, Loey.” 

“It’s beautiful.” Loey stroked the ribbon and then asked, widening her eyes in a way that left Tobe blushing and breathless, “Will you tie it in my hair for me?” 

Tongue too knotted to speak, Tobe took the ribbon from her hand and began to tie it in her hair. Her hair was softer than he could have imagined (and he had thought about it a lot lately, wondering what it would be like to comb his fingers through it as he would a horse’s mane) and his hands were tripping over themselves. Half the hair that should have been in the ribbon ended up outside of it, but Tobe still believed that she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen with the red ribbon in her hair that reminded him of love, of Midwinter holly, of the roses in her cheeks, and of the first spring berries that always filled his mouth with juice when he ate them by the handful. 

“Thank you.” She brushed a finger, still icy from the snow, along his burning cheek. “I’m a poor girl, but I’ve a gift for you, too.” 

“What is it?” Tobe asked when he truly wanted to say that just sitting in the stables with her was enough of a present for him. 

“My love.” Her lips tasted of snow and pine needles as she pressed them lightly against his, and he knew that he would remember her and his first kiss for the rest of his life. He would have been happy forever if the moment spread into eternity when she murmured into the curve of his mouth, “I ain’t got nothin’ else to give.”


End file.
